2006

EnCana Corp. and some of its affiliates agreed to sell virtually all of their gas storage interests to private equity fund Carlyle/Riverstone Global Energy and Power Fund for about $1.5 billion after adjustments.

Behind-the-scene negotiations over federal-state sharing of offshore production revenue were ongoing last week in anticipation of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s scheduled Wednesday mark-up and vote on legislation, sponsored by the panel’s leaders, that seeks to make additional acreage in the natural gas-prone area known as Lease 181 available for oil and natural gas drilling.

A House Government Reform subcommittee is probing why oil and natural gas leases negotiated between the Interior Department and producers in 1998 and 1999 did not include price thresholds — a move that the panel estimates could cost the federal government as much as $7 billion in royalties on production from the Outer Continental Shelf.

A dispute over the local economic benefit of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal at the Port of Long Beach has stalled negotiations between Sound Energy Solutions (Mitsubishi, ConocoPhillips) and the City of Long Beach. The city and SES are scheduled to meet Monday, and following those discussions city energy department head Chris Garner will give an oral report to the city council at its meeting Tuesday night, Garner told Daily GPI Friday.

Northern Natural Gas said Friday afternoon it had contracted a repair crew and dive boat that were en route to a leak site (see Daily GPI, March 2) on the Northern-operated Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System offshore Texas. Pending any weather delays, Northern expected the dive boat to arrive at the site late Saturday evening and repairs to begin Sunday. It anticipates restoration of service to some of the affected platforms downstream of Matagorda 758 by the start of Tuesday’s gas day.

Kinder Morgan and Sempra Energy said Tuesday that they have secured commitments for the entire 1.8 Bcf/d of proposed firm transportation capacity on the 1,323-mile, $4 billion Rockies Express pipeline project, which would bring Rocky Mountain natural gas east to markets across the Midwest and Northeast.

FERC’s proposal to loosen the rules for granting market-based rates for new natural gas storage projects, with the goal of speeding an increase in storage capacity and thereby mitigating market peaks and valleys and consequently price volatility, has brought a storm of comments from interested parties on how the rules should be written.

In anticipation of its planned merger with Cinergy Corp., Duke Energy on Friday was granted limited waivers of FERC’s policies and regulations to divest itself of a number of natural gas transportation contracts associated with certain West Coast and East Coast generation power plants that will not be part of the asset base of the merged company.

The former chief accounting officer of Enron Corp.’s wholesale energy trading operations testified Monday he transferred millions of dollars of reserves from the unit in 2000 to help the company top Wall Street’s earnings forecasts.